‘I am invoking Martha’s rule’: how a woman saved her father from near death in hospital

David Osenton almost died because of medical mistakes and delays, but new rule allowed Karen to demand a second opinion

• Martha’s rule may have saved more than 500 lives in England since 2024

For six awful days last summer, as her father, David, got progressively sicker in the cardiac ward of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, Karen Osenton would read the poster above his bed telling patients about their right under Martha’s rule to ask for a second opinion.

Her father, a retired engineer in his early 70s who was normally extremely fit, was by then thin, jaundiced and could barely lift his head from the pillow. But his bed was right beside the nurses’ station, surely they would notice if he needed more urgent treatment?